Alabama Public Television spotlights Muscle Shoals to Music Row, Fiddleworms legacy

Alabama Public Television has turned Muscle Shoals to Music Row into a four-part television event, and the anchor is Muscle Shoals Meets the 70s, a chapter that pushes the Shoals’ concert history into prime-time public television. The special airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. and on the free PBS App, with the first episode running 52 minutes and first airing May 7 before returning May 9. Episode II follows May 14 and May 16, keeping the run paced like a destination screening rather than a buried catalog item.

What makes the presentation click for film and media fans is the way APT packages a familiar Alabama music story for a statewide audience. The series has been broadcasting as a radio program since 2003, and APT frames it as a “living tribute” to a legacy of innovation, independence and musical excellence. The television version broadens that idea by mixing performance footage with behind-the-scenes access, showing not only the sound of the Shoals but the people who keep it moving. The episode list pulls in Jamie Barrier, Eric Erdman, The Shoals Strings, Lenny LeBlanc, Gary Baker, Ashley Brown, Jimmy Nutt, Matt Prater, Weston Stewart, The Shoals Sisters, Cissy Guin and Angela Hacker, along with performers tied to Music Row and beyond.

The emotional center of the run is the Fiddleworms, whose Muscle Shoals Meets concerts have been raising money for local charities since 2018. In Alabama Public Television’s episode guide, Doing the Work follows the band as it fights its nerves while rehearsing with friends and heroes. Healing closes the loop, showing the Fiddleworms and Friends wrapping up the concerts and building two more special-needs playgrounds in their hometown. That charitable arc gives the series a current-day stake that goes beyond nostalgia.

The community impact is already part of the story. A 2025 local report said Muscle Shoals Meets the 70s was organized by Russell Mefford and the Fiddleworms, and that the 2024 concert helped fund Phase One of accessible playgrounds at Florence High School and Muscle Shoals Middle School. That makes the television special feel less like a retrospective than a record of an active civic machine, where music, fundraising and regional identity are all moving together.

APT’s broader series description says the program features performers from the Shoals area as well as artists and songwriters from Music Row and around the world. That mix gives the run its pull: the Muscle Shoals story is not being preserved as museum material, but staged as a living, local broadcast event with enough scale to travel well across Alabama and enough heart to still feel homegrown.